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Man Patents Self-Burying Coffin
disco_tracy writes "A California inventor has filed a patent for a coffin that screws into the ground vertically. The reason? It greatly reduces excavation labor and burial costs, decreases land use, and opens up more space for burials in unused areas of a cemetery. Writer Clark Boyd also lists 5 other unconventional burial options, including lye, ecopods, GPS devices that track bodies buried without headstones, cryogenics and — my favorite — getting buried in the sky."
typically they don't put graveyards in areas that are covered in pipes and power lines...
Now maybe if the civilized human race were finally able to get past the rather strange tradition of putting their loved ones' preserved physical remains into (usually rather expensive) boxes in the ground, in order to last as long as possible, filling up acres and acres of land with these, increasing on a daily basis with every new death -- then that might be some REAL progress. At some point this whole "burying" thing needs to go. It is not an infinitely sustainable model to follow.
People have been making ossuaries for hundreds of years. Your idea is probably less creepy.